Love Your Melon Opens A New Chapter At Rockhurst University

Each year, 15,000 children are diagnosed with cancer, and Love Your Melon strives to connect with all of them through specially made beanies, hospital visits, and with college campus crews in communities all across America.

Rockhurst University joined the program in fall 2017 with a crew led by junior Julia Mattivi.

Mattivi discovered Love Your Melon on accident. A friend of hers was wearing one of the organization’s beanies and because she liked how it looked, she put one on her Christmas list last year. When she went on the website and started reading about their mission, Mattivi knew she wanted to get involved.

“I contacted nationals and expressed interest in starting a campus crew at Rockhurst, but I found out that there were already people involved with it, so I just joined up with them. Since then, I’ve filled in as leader because other people didn’t have enough time to go through all the registration requirements,” she said.

Typically, Love Your Melon does not have several crews in the same area. Because the University of Missouri-Kansas City already had their own crew, the students hoping for their own organization at Rockhurst had to work hard to show how Kansas City would benefit from an additional crew. Being a relatively big city with a lot of hospitals, they were given the chance.

The Love Your Melon mission is to give a hat to every child battling cancer in America, as well as supporting nonprofit organizations that lead the fight against pediatric cancer. One of Loves Your Melon’s organizational partners, Be The Match, host tissue swab drives. It’s something that Mattivi said the Rockhurst chapter would like to host in the near future.

For now, the Rockhurst crew is focusing on pediatric cancer awareness. But once they are able to host a tissue swab drive — the national organization asks chapters to build their social media following for the opportunity to host those events — hands-on work with Love Your Melon’s nonprofit partners will be the core of their work.

“I’m excited for that next chapter with the crew,” Mattivi said. “Getting to go into the hospital and have those personal interactions with the people I’m serving is something that I love to do and I’m grateful that I can do it with a great organization with an even greater cause.”

Follow Rockhurst’s Love Your Melon crew on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.